Innovations in violence

Pam Spaulding over at Pandagon has taken up the issue of excessive taser use. In this latest entry she documents three people killed by Taser as well as someone tasered for "aggressive language."

The real problem is that many police officers haven’t been trained in the use of tasers. So when they use them that use is excessive and they use them in situations where even non-lethal violence is effective. Such mistakes are basic human nature, I’ve seen similar trends in roleplaying games where people are sometimes quite willing to hand out non-lethal attacks. Of course, as the cases above show, in real life even non-lethal weapons can prove deadly. One commenter suggests that the better term is less-lethal not non-lethal.

However, the title was not just snarky. I think cameras for tasers is a great idea, what we need now are cameras for guns. Questionable shootings would be easier, if by no means trivial, to resolve if we could consistently get footage.

In fact, having done a bit more googling, it looks like somebody is actually trying the idea. Check out comment #6 for more details. There was also a swrite-up in the Times Herald-Record. That article also mentions the idea of shoulder mounted cameras, which might be easier but would also raise more privacy concerns. Still increased accountability for cops and better evidence against criminals might make for a worthy privacy trade-off.

Also, as a side note, if it’s good for policing it’s probably also good for counter-insurgency.